Ninety-year-old Shimon Peres's run as a Israel's ninth president to end this summer after a seven-year term.
By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMANPeres at 2013 GA 370(photo credit: Mark Neiman/GPO)
President Shimon Peres’s term will end on July 27, and not 12 days earlier as previously thought, the Knesset’s legal adviser Eyal Yinon said Wednesday.It had been thought the presidential election would be held on July 15, the date on which the previous presidential vote was held seven years ago. But Yinon ruled the timing should be according to the Hebrew date.Yinon issued directives for the presidential race Wednesday, after prospective candidates began fighting over what they thought the rules for the race were. MKs will vote by secret ballot – no less than 30 and no more than 90 days before Peres’s term ends.Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein will decide the date of the vote after consulting with his deputies.By law, Edelstein has to announce the date three weeks before the race.Candidates need to announce their candidacy and submit the signatures of 10 MKs who support them two weeks before the race.MKs can sign for only one candidate. A week before the election, Edelstein will announce the candidates and their supporters.The only definite candidates are Likud MK Reuven Rivlin, who lost to Peres seven years ago, and Labor MK Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. Hatnua faction chairman Meir Sheetrit also wants to run.Likud MK Silvan Shalom and former Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik are considering running but have not made a decision.There are also potential candidates waiting for a decision from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman about who they will support, most notably Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky and former foreign minister David Levy.
Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett wants Sharansky to run, and would support him.Sharansky met this week with the Shas faction.A source close to Rivlin said that whether on not he wins, Rivlin intends to remain in public office – if he doesn’t win, he’ll stay in the Knesset.
